Go East,Young Cadre: Experiments in Inter‐Provincial Training of Party and State Managers in China

This article situates China's local policy experimentation in the broader context of policy experiments in decentralized political systems, through a case study which represents a local state response to China's transition to a market economy. With growing regional and urban–rural inequalities evident after the initial reform period (1978–1994), local party leaders of inland provinces devised strategies for addressing these inequalities and encouraging public–private sector mobility among party officials. County and township‐level leaders pursued local policy experiments in which they selected and sent officials to find private‐sector work in China's booming coastal cities. Initiated in the 1990s and peaking in the 2000s, these policy experiments and inter‐provincial transfers demonstrate the discretion that local officials possess to conduct programmatic/policy experiments in a unitary political system and show how officials resort to extra‐institutional strategies in order to bridge perceived knowledge gaps. The ultimate demise of these programmes illuminates the challenges to extra‐institutional policy innovations in transitioning states.     

Agricultural Development and Household Incomes in Central Asia: A Survey of Tajikistan, 2003-2008

Two noted specialists on the agricultural economies of the former Soviet Union examine the effects of land reform on agricultural production and the income of rural house-holds in Tajikistan. The authors utilize official government statistics to discern trends of agricultural output at the national level, and the results of three extensive surveys conducted in 2007-2008 (N > 2,000) and one in 2003 (N = 4,000 respondents) by international organizations (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Asian Development Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Bank) to identify household-level changes. They also review the legislative framework for agrarian reform in the country; examine national-level trends in farm structure and organization, livestock production, farm productivity, and cropping patterns; and analyze shifts in size of land holdings and rural family incomes at the household level. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: D130, O130, P320, Q150. 11 figures, 10 tables, 42 references.     

China's Exports and Imports of Agricultural Products under the WTO

An American economic geographer specializing in the agricultural sector of China's economy presents a study of that country's trade in agricultural products. The paper is focused on patterns of change in the regional distribution of agricultural and aquacultural exports and imports before and after China's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. Drawing on research during the course of a field trip in July 2008 and utilizing data compiled by China's Customs Bureau, the author provides a comprehensive assessment of the country's trade with 10 major world regions through the year 2007. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F14, F40, O13, Q17. 1 figure, 4 tables, 32 references.     

农用地多功能视角下乡村旅游运营模式引导决策研究——基于重庆城郊25个行政村的调查分析

通过解构农用地多功能性与乡村旅游辩证关系,设计了"农用地多功能性-村域乡村旅运营模式"联动引导决策体系,并对重庆市九龙坡区25个行政村进行实证分析。结果显示：采用"农户自助式微型运营模式"的区域乡镇企业和产业集聚程度较高;采用"集体经济自营型运营模式"的区域农业生产条件较好、农地多功能性明显;采用"承包经营流转型运营模式"的区域农业产业化进程滞后;采用"多元股份合营型运营模式"的区域集体经济发达、农地多功能性显著。研究显示,通过农用地多功能性与主导功能评价对乡村旅运营模式引导决策,从一定程度上弥补了以往研究中决策过程缺乏定量数据支撑和量化方法画的缺陷。     

Power Relations and Upgrading in the Cashew Value Chain of Côte d'Ivoire

Development organizations are increasingly adopting market‐based approaches to reducing rural poverty and food insecurity in the global South. The value chain approach is particularly popular. Aid donors, governments and non‐governmental organizations are applying value chain concepts originally designed for promoting industrial production to smallholder agricultural production. Cashew development in Côte d'Ivoire illustrates this new approach to rural development in which ‘upgrading’ the production and processing links are top priorities. A core assumption informing this approach is that improvements in product quality at the producer level will yield higher producer prices and incomes. This article examines this assumed quality–price relationship through a comparative analysis of cashew quality and prices in Côte d'Ivoire. The research reveals a disconnect between nut quality and producer prices. The case study demonstrates that power relations are more important than quality in setting producer prices for raw cashew nuts.     

城镇化对农业农村的多维度影响——基于省际面板数据实证研究

基于面板数据，从综合系统-子系统-要素等三方面定量测度省域人口、土地与产业城镇化对农业农村发展的影响程度，深入剖析城镇化不同要素对农业与农村系统发展的作用机理。研究结果表明：①人口城镇化与产业城镇化对农业农村的影响更加明显，对农村生活系统影响的弹性系数大于1的地区比重分别为58.06%和64.52%；土地与产业城镇化对农业生产系统产生负向影响较为明显，弹性系数小于0的地区比重分别为29.03%和38.71%；②城镇化率、产业结构和建成区比重对人均耕地面积、乡村劳动力比重和人均粮食产量呈显著负相关，与农民人均纯收入、人均农业产值和单位面积机械动力呈显著正相关；③通过深入分析近30年省域城镇化对各地区农业农村发展的作用机理，对于新时期新型城镇化、农业农村转型发展等战略的贯彻落实具有重大的现实意义。     

China's National Innovation System in Transition

Through a brief examination of China's science and technology history since the 1950s, this study suggests that the role of state is crucial for understanding the development, restructuring, and performance of China's innovation system. It traces the evolution of that system from a centrally controlled, segregated system geared toward weapons development during China's pre-reform period into one (since the early 1980s) oriented increasingly toward production of civilian goods, and seeking heightened enterprise participation and greater cooperation among industries, universities, and the government. Despite the reorientation of the system, the paper demonstrates the Chinese government's persistent role in guiding the changes. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers, H50, O31, O32. 1 figure, 72 references.     

How China Navigated the Dilemma of Trade Liberalization and Government Revenues

Many economists believe that in the long run, the aggregate performance of open economies is better than that of closed ones, and that open policies contribute significantly to economic development. At the same time, many political scientists and policy makers fear that, in the short run, one of the steps towards openness — trade liberalization — may harm government revenues. However, in the 1990s, China successfully navigated the dilemma of trade liberalization and government revenues. In this period, China decreased tariff and non‐tariff barriers for WTO accession, but has achieved dramatically increased tariff revenues since 1999. This study explores how China implemented trade liberalization and simultaneously increased tariff revenues in the 1990s. It demonstrates that a series of institutional arrangements, including a reform of Criminal Law, rigorous anti‐smuggling activities and a de facto tax imposed on the export sector, successfully curbed smuggling activities through the processing trade, and made foreign‐invested manufacturing enterprises the major contributors to the stability of customs revenue. China's case shows that a prosperous, export‐oriented and foreign‐invested manufacturing sector could potentially provide a developing country with a source of customs revenue.     

Whose Wealth Is It Anyway? Mozambique's Outstanding Economic Growth with Worsening Rural Poverty

Despite rapid economic growth and massive inflows of aid, rural poverty in Mozambique is worsening. Agricultural production and productivity have not increased in the last decade. Use of chemical fertilizers and other modern technology is at a low level and decreasing. The present development model emphasizes that the role of government and donors is to provide human capital and infrastructure, while the private sector is responsible for economic development and ending poverty. The most recent national surveys confirm what is being seen elsewhere in Africa — that this non‐interventionist strategy does not raise agricultural productivity or reduce poverty. While 80 per cent of Mozambique's population is engaged in agriculture, this sector contributes only 20 per cent of GDP. This suggests that investments in agriculture are likely to generate pro‐poor growth, both to rural and urban dwellers. This policy failure is increasingly recognized, but donors and government have invested too much political capital in the current policy to change easily.     

Decentring international and institutional famine relief in late nineteenth-century China: in search of the local

This article uses rural gazetteer biographies to examine village and household-level famine relief during the great North China Famine of 1876–9 to deepen our understanding of past relief methods and dynamics at the most local level. Despite the appearance of major works recently on famine in modern China, particularly on the Great Leap Forward, knowledge of Chinese famine relief remains thin and scattered considering the enormity of the subject. Nineteenth-century China saw intensifying international relief activity as well as the emergence of a vibrant charity-relief sector based in China's major cities, leading to the rise of prominent relief institutions in the twentieth century, such as the Chinese Red Cross. But the increasingly intense disasters of China's modern period also saw a surprising persistence of local humanitarian traditions still barely covered by historians.     

农贷与甘肃农村经济的复苏（1935-1945年）

内容提要 20世纪三四十年代,在开发西北和建设抗日后方基地的背景下,国民政府在甘肃推行农贷政策,建立了以新式银行、合作社和合作金库为核心的金融网络,形成了“政府一银行一合作社（合作金库）一农户”的农贷模式。甘肃农贷以1941年为界分为两个阶段,1941年之前以救济农村为主,之后以国民经济建设为主,发放农田水利、农业推广、土地改良、农村副业和畜牧业等贷款,取得了比较好的成效。农贷的发放,使甘肃农业和农村经济总体呈上升趋势,也使抗战时期成为近代以来甘肃农业和农村经济发展状况最好的一个时期。     

刍议青海农牧业保险发展策略

农村经济的发展和抵御农业风险均离不开农业保险。在农产品分散生产的情况下,作为青海省支柱产业之一的农牧业发展基础还比较薄弱,农户、中小型农牧企业与合作社抵抗风险的能力也较弱,因此必须重视发展和扩大青海农业保险,以减少农户的风险损失,提高农牧民收入。     

Food Security and Russia's 2010 Drought

An American specialist on Russia's agricultural sector examines the progression and impact of that country's 2010 drought (the worst in a half-century), leading to a grain harvest one-third smaller than originally forecast. A particular focus is on the country's grain reserves and the government's response to drought in such areas as grain export policy and maintaining the size of the domestic livestock herd, responses which the author argues are conditioned by the drive for food security, a concept that has dominated the political discourse in tandem with resurgent economic nationalism during the post-Soviet period.     

Going Against the Grain: Why Do Canada and the United States Market Wheat So Differently?

At the turn of the twentieth century, private grain exchanges settled the daily prices for North American wheat. By the end of the Second World War, the Canadian and US governments had intervened significantly in these markets. The Canadian government required farmers in its western provinces to deliver their product to the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), a single-selling-desk agency that, by then, had supplanted private wheat marketing in western Canada. Meanwhile, the United States government subsidized farm incomes with domestic-use taxes and import tariffs, but otherwise preserved private wheat marketing. In this article, I demonstrate that these disparate agricultural policies were broadly defined by immutable economic realities imposed on each country by global wheat-trade patterns and triggered by unprecedentedly severe agricultural crises. That is, amidst the precipitous fall in wheat prices in the early 1930s, each government crafted farm-support policies that reflected its domestic-consumption share of wheat production and the importance of wheat to its overall economy.     

Public Production of Anti‐Retroviral Medicines in Brazil, 1990–2007

This article examines Brazil's experience with the public production of anti‐retroviral drugs (ARVs) and highlights the important role of the state in guaranteeing access to life‐saving medicines and fulfilling human rights commitments. The key to understanding the government's successful intervention in the pharmaceutical market and provision of treatment rests on the synergistic, albeit political, relationship between reform‐minded public servants and civil society activists. This article argues that three key factors led to the government becoming a direct producer of ARVs: 1) a pre‐existing infrastructure of public laboratories that have served the public health system to a greater or lesser degree since the 1960s; 2) strong civil society pressures, including public health activists both inside and outside the government; and 3) a pharmaceutical sector characterized by high prices and controlled by transnational drug companies.     

20世纪60年代初国家财政支援农业的历史考察

由于"左"的错误和自然灾害,中国在1959～1961年出现了三年经济困难,当时最突出的问题是农业生产遭遇严重挫折,粮食极度短缺。为加快农业生产的恢复,20世纪60年代初,国家制定了"吃饭第一"的方针,要求各行各业支援农业。利用财政手段增加对农业的投入是贯彻这一方针的重要举措。国家财政支援农业的措施主要有两方面:一是减少提取农业剩余;二是直接增加对农业和农村的财政投入。     

尺度重构视角下行政区划演变的动力机制——以广东省为例

本文以尺度重构理论为分析框架,基于广东省改革开放以来行政区划演变的历程,剖析了各阶段区划演变的动力机制。研究认为,行政区划调整作为刚性的尺度调整工具,其发生周期、主要类型和动力来源嵌入在国家或区域为提升竞争力所采取的尺度战略及其相应的尺度重构方式之中。广东省的区划演变历程可归纳为"中央授权+中央调整地方权力尺度"、"中央放权+中央收权"和"广东省调整地方权力尺度"三个阶段性的尺度重构策略变动轨迹。此外,尺度重构可能体现在国家治理的诸多方面,由于各时期国家、区域宏观战略的不同,尺度重构的推动主体、内容指向会随之变化,空间生产策略也将进行调整,使得不同阶段对各地域空间赋予的尺度重要性大相径庭。     

中国城乡协调发展空间格局与演化研究

本文从三个方面构建了城乡协调发展度指数,对中国2000-2008年31个省城乡协调发展程度的整体变化及在大区上的空间差异进行了评价和原因探讨。结果显示,中国城乡协调发展程度整体呈现上升趋势,主要原因是城乡增长率差异系数的降低,说明我国近些年的支农惠农和统筹城乡发展的政策效果显著。东部和西部地区城乡发展逐步协调,而中部和东北地区城乡发展协调度下降。东部城市和农村基本实现共同富裕,而西部是较低水平上的协调。东北地区先大幅下降后缓慢上升,中部地区的城乡协调发展度目前是最低的,变化较为复杂。     

Reforms,Globalization, and Urban Growth in China: The Case of Hangzhou

Chinese cities have experienced unprecedented growth and restructuring during the reform period. This study by two geographers examines the rapid growth of urban population in the relatively typical large city of Hangzhou (one of China's historical capitals), and investigates underlying factors by highlighting the significance of reforms and globalization in the growth of Chinese cities. The authors also discuss problems that Hangzhou (currently with ca. 4 million inhabitants) faces in coping with rapid urban growth and restructuring. They argue that "control" and "management" approaches to urban growth have limitations in China's transitional cities, and that the gradual process of reform is incompatible with the nature of urban planning in China. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, O20, R23. 4 figures, 44 references.     

珠江三角洲镇域乡镇工业发展及其地方经济影响研究——以顺德市北窑镇为例

本文以珠江三洲为研究区域,以顺德市北窑镇为实例,就乡镇工业发展对一个镇域地方经济产生的影响进行了研究。认为在一些乡镇工业部门的发展过程中,可以作为一个"增长极",通过前后项生产联系有效地带动地方农业和第三产业的增长,从而形成地方的多种经济活动空间集聚体。因此,地方政府在选择其经济增长极时需对其与其它经济部门的前后项生产联系作周密的考察。